Everyday heroes act quickly to revive injured crash victims

Peter McLean: He had blacked out on me, I felt for a pulse and it was just there … I gave him a couple of pushes on the chest and all of a sudden he jumped up.

TWO everyday Mackay people have showed just how much of an extraordinary difference one person can make to somebody's life.

Peter McLean and Jayden MacDougall both potentially saved a life within a day of each other this week.

Fourteen-year-old Jayden and Mr McLean provided first aid at two traffic accidents within 24 hours of each other on Monday night and Tuesday morning.

Mr McLean was working on the roadside on Tuesday when he saw a man crash his car into a set of traffic lights at the intersection of Nebo and Bridge roads.

"I was right on the corner there, working, and I saw the accident, so my automatic reaction was to go straight over and make sure that they're alright," he said.

Immediately after the accident, Mr McLean checked the driver for vital signs.

"He had blacked out on me, I felt for a pulse and it was just there, I cleared out his mouth... and then tried to do as much as I could with CPR ... I gave him a couple of pushes on the chest and all of a sudden he jumped up," he said. "It was all just a quick reaction."

Jayden MacDougall.

It's not the first time Mr McLean has reacted so quickly to an accident.

"Years ago, over at Mt Pleasant, a taxi rolled over and there was fire in the engine bay so I sort of got in and kicked the back window out." Tuesday's accident brought back some scary memories of the previous incident, he said.

Taking a first aid course is something Mr McLean recommends.

Jayden MacDougall was one of the first people on the scene of an accident at Mt Pleasant in which a person was injured after being hit by a car near the roundabout at KFC.

The 14-year-old rushed over to help and used his first aid skills on the patient until emergency services arrived, on Monday night.

It wasn't the only time he'd being heroic.

In 2012, Jayden was walking home from school near the Gooseponds when an elderly man collapsed in bushes in front of him.

"My dad is a safety officer and basically he has been training me up," he said at the time.

Jayden and another man helped sit the elderly man in a chair in the shade at the Gooseponds before they called for help.